Elements of Morals Part 24

Of cleanliness.

=Other duties concerning the body.--Temperance.=--Temperance recommended for two reasons: 1, as necessary to health, and consequently as a corollary to the duty of self-preservation; 2, as necessary to human dignity, which, through intemperance, falls below the brute.

Of the moderate use of sensual pleasures. That we should elevate them by attaching to them ideas and sentiments.

Other virtues: Decency, modesty, propriety, etc.

=131. Have we duties toward ourselves?=--This has been disputed, and it seems rather strange that it should have been. No one, say the jurists, binds himself to himself; no one does himself injustice, they say again.

In short, man belongs to himself: is not that the first of ownerships, and the basis of all the others?

"No," replies Victor Cousin, "from man's being free and belonging to himself, it is not to be concluded that he has all power over himself.

From the fact alone that he is endowed with both liberty and intelligence, I, on the contrary, conclude that he cannot, without failing in his duty, degrade his liberty any more than he can degrade his intelligence. Liberty is not only sacred to others; it is so in itself.

"This obligation imposed on the moral personality to respect itself, it is not I who established it; I cannot, therefore, destroy it. Is the respect I have for myself founded on one of those arbitrary agreements which cease to be when the two parties freely renounce it?

Are the two contracting parties here I and myself? No; there is one of the parties that is not I, namely, humanity itself, the moral personality, the human essence which does not belong to me, which is not my property, which I can no more degrade or wound in myself than I can in others. There is not even any agreement here or contract.

"Finally, man would still have duties, even though he ceased to be in any relation with other men. As long as he has any intelligence and liberty left, the idea of right remains in him, and with that idea, duty. If he were all at once thrown upon a desert island, duty would still follow him there."[89]

Kant has likewise defended the existence of the duties of man toward himself.

"Supposing," he says, "that there were no duties of this kind, there would not be any duties then of any kind; for I can only think myself under obligations to others, so far as I am under obligations to myself.... Thus do people say, when the question is to save a man or his life: I owe this to myself; I owe it to myself to cultivate such dispositions of mind as make of me a fit member of society (_Doctrine de la vertu_, trad. franc. de Barni, p. 70)."

=132. Duties concerning the body.--Duty of self-preservation.=--The duties toward one's self are generally divided into two cla.s.ses: duties _toward the body_, duties _toward the soul_. Kant justly criticised this distinction, and asks how can there be any obligations toward the body--that is to say, toward a ma.s.s of matter--which, apart from the soul, is nothing better than any of the rough bodies which surround us. Kant proposes to subst.i.tute for this distinction the following: duties of man toward himself as an _animal_ (that is, united to animality by the corporeal functions), and the duties of man toward himself as a _moral being_.

Considered as an animal, man is united to a body, and this union of soul and body is what is called life. Hence a first duty which may be considered a fundamental duty, and the basis of all the others, namely, the duty of self-preservation. It is, in fact, obvious that the fulfillment of all our other duties rests on this prior one.

Before being a duty, self-preservation is for man an instinct, and even so energetic and so universal an instinct that there would seem to be very little need to transform it into duty: so much so is it an instinct that man has rather to combat in himself the cowardly tendency which attaches him to life, than that which induces him to seek death. Yet does it happen, and unfortunately too often, that men, crazed by despair, come to believe that they have a right to free themselves of life: this is what is called suicide. It is, therefore, very important in morals to combat this fatal idea, and to teach men that, even though life ceases to be a pleasure, there is still a moral obligation which they cannot escape.

=133. Suicide.--J. J. Rousseau and Kant.=--The question of suicide was treated with great ability by J. J. Rousseau in one of his most celebrated works. He put into the mouth of two personages, on the one side, the apology for, and on the other, the condemnation of suicide. We will not cite here these two pieces, the eloquence of which is somewhat declamatory, but we will give an abstract of the princ.i.p.al arguments presented on each side in favor of its own position.

_Arguments in favor of suicide._--1. It is said that life is not our own because it was given us.--Not so, for, just because it was given us, is it our own. G.o.d has given us arms, and yet we allow them to be cut off when necessary.

2. Man, it is said, is a soldier on sentry on earth: he should not leave his post without orders.--So be it; but misfortune is precisely that order which informs me that I have nothing more to do here below.

3. Suicide, it is said again, is rebellion against Providence.--But how?

it is not to escape its laws one puts an end to one's life; it is to execute them the better: in whatever place the soul may be, it will always be under G.o.d's government.

4. "If thy slave attempted to kill himself," says Socrates to Cebes in the _Phaedo_, "wouldst thou not punish him for trying unjustly to deprive thee of thy property?"--Good Socrates, what sayest thou? Does one no longer belong to G.o.d when dead? Thou art quite wrong; thou shouldst have said: "If thou puttest on thy slave a garment which is in his way in the service he owes thee, wouldst thou punish him for laying this garment aside in order the better to serve thee?"

5. It is said that life is never an evil.--Yet has nature implanted in us so great a horror of death that life to certain beings must surely be an evil, since they resolve to renounce it.

6. It is said that suicide is a cowardice.--How many cowards, then, among the ancients! Arria, Eponina, Lucretia, Brutus, Cato! Certainly there is courage in suffering the evils one cannot avoid; but it were insanity to suffer voluntarily those from which one can free himself.

7. There are unquestionably duties that should attach us to life.--But he who is a burden to every one, and of no use to himself, why should he not have a right to quit a place where his complaints are importunate and his sufferings useless?

8. Why should it be allowable to get cured of the gout and not of life? If we consider the will of G.o.d, what evil is there for us to combat, that he has not himself sent us? Are we not permitted, then, to change the nature of any thing because all that is, is as he wished it?

9. "Thou shall not kill," says the Decalogue.--But if this commandment is to be taken literally, one should kill neither criminals nor enemies.

Next comes the answer of my lord Edward, namely, J. J. Rousseau:

_Arguments against suicide._--1. If life has no moral end, one can unquestionably free one's self from it when it is too painful: if it has one, it is not permitted to set it arbitrary limits.

2. The wish to die does not const.i.tute a right to die; otherwise, a similar wish might justify all crimes.

3. Thou sayest: Life is an evil; but if thou hast the courage to bear it, thou wilt some day say: Life is a good.

4. Physical pain may in extreme cases deprive one of the use of reason and will; but moral pain should be borne bravely.

5. No man is wholly useless; he has always some duties to fulfill.

It has been justly observed, we think, that this second letter is feebler than the first, and that Rousseau displayed more talent in justifying suicide than in combating it; at any rate, the following peroration will always be considered an admirable pa.s.sage to quote:

"Listen to me, thou foolish youth: thou art dear to me, I pity thy errors.

If thou hast at the bottom of thy heart the least feeling of virtue left, come to me, let me teach thee to love life. Every time thou shalt be tempted to put an end to it, say to thyself: 'Let me do one more good deed before I die!' Then go and seek some poverty to relieve, some misfortune to console, some oppressed wretch to protect. If this contemplation does not stop thee to-day, it will stop thee to-morrow, or the day after, or perhaps for the rest of thy life. If it does not stop thee, go then and die; for thou art not worthy to live."

Suicide may be considered from three different standpoints, which are all three involved and blended in the preceding discussion:

1. Suicide is a transgression of our duty toward other men (inasmuch as, however miserable, one can always render some service to others).

2. Suicide is contrary to our duties toward G.o.d (inasmuch as man abandons thereby, without being relieved of it, the post intrusted to him in this world).

3. Finally--and this is for us here the essential point--suicide is a violation of the duty of man toward himself; as, all other considerations set aside, he is bound to self-preservation as a moral personality, and has no right whatsoever upon himself.

_Kant's discussion._--Kant is, of all philosophers, the one who most insisted on this latter view of the matter, and developed it with the greatest force.

"It seems absurd," he says, "that man could do himself injury."

(_Volenti non fit injuria._[90]) Thus did the stoic regard it as a prerogative of the sage, to be able, quietly and of his own free will, to step out of this life as he would out of a room full of smoke. But this very courage, this strength of soul which enables us to brave death, revealing to us a something man prizes more than life, should have been to him [the stoic] all the greater incentive not to destroy in himself a being endowed with a faculty so great, so superior to all the most powerful of sensuous motives, and consequently not to deprive himself of life.

Man cannot abdicate his personality as long as there are duties for him, consequently as long as he lives; and there is contradiction in granting him the right of freeing himself from all obligation--that is to say, acting as freely as if he had no need of any kind of permission. To annihilate in one's own person the subject of morality, is to extirpate from the world as much as possible the existence of morality itself; it is disposing of one's self as of an instrument, for a simply arbitrary end; it is lowering humanity in one's own person.

=134. Resume of the discussion on suicide.=--From the above point of view the sophisms of Saint-Preux in J. J. Rousseau are easily controverted. I can cut my arm off, you say; why can I not destroy my body?--But in destroying a withered or mortified arm, I nowise injure the human personality, which remains within me entire; and, on the contrary, I deliver the moral personality within me of a physical trouble which deprives it of its liberty.

I can, you say, avoid pain: no one is obliged to bear a toothache, if he can free himself from it.--Yes, unquestionably; but in finding a remedy for physical pain, instead of wronging the moral personality of man, I free it, on the contrary, of the evils which, in crushing it, tend to debase it. Besides, there are, moreover, pains from which it is not right to free one's self. For example, it is not right to leave the sickbed of one dear to us because his pains are unbearable.

But life is full of misery, and, in certain cases, the evil is without any compensation.--The question is not whether life is agreeable or painful: it might be a question, if pleasure were the end of life; but if this end is duty, there are no circ.u.mstances, however painful, which do not leave room for the possibility of fulfilling a duty.

It is a sophism, they say, to call suicide a cowardice; for it requires a great deal of courage to take one's life.--No one denies that there is a certain amount of physical courage coupled with taking one's life; but there is a still greater courage, a moral courage, in braving pain, poverty, slavery. Suicide is therefore a relative cowardice. It matters not, moreover, whether suicide be a brave or a cowardly act; what is certain is, that man cannot destroy within himself the agent subject to the law of duty without implicitly denying this law and all there is within contained.

Finally, it will be said that the moral personality is distinct from the body, and that in destroying the body, one does not injure the personality. But we shall answer, that the only personality of which we can dispose, and of which we have the care, is that which is actually united to our physical body. It is that very personality that has duties to perform; it is that which we cannot sacrifice to a state of things absolutely unknown to us.

As to our duties toward others, there is no one that has absolutely no service to render to his fellow-men; and each of us is always able to render them the greatest of services, namely, to give them the example of virtue, courage, gentleness, and patience. Finally, in respect to G.o.d, if we look upon life as a trial, man has no right to free himself of this trial before it is ended; if we look upon it as a punishment, we have no right to cut short its duration as long as nature has not p.r.o.nounced on it. Can we not, then, it is asked, change any thing in the order of things, since all is disposed by G.o.d?--Certainly we can; we can, as we see fit, modify things, but not persons.

G.o.d, it is said again, has given us life: we can, then, do with it what we like.--But life is not purely a gift, an absolute gift: it is bound up in the moral personality which is not in our power, and which is not to be considered a thing to traffic with, give away, or destroy.

To admit the legitimacy of suicide, is to admit that man belongs to himself as a _thing_ belongs to its master; it is implicitly to admit the right to traffic with one's own personality and, according to Kant's energetic expression, "to treat one's self as a means and not as an end."